I’m a dope, a patsy, a dupe. Or at least tragically naive: Somehow, it seems, I’m once again surprised by the unabashed dishonesty of our worst anti-gay opponents.

This time it’s Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons of NARTH, writing a long piece about same-sex adoption. It has a small section titled, “The children do suffer,” with this opening:

There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.

He brings up two studies to support this, one of them by Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, and then regretfully tells us:

Not surprisingly, there are scholars who oppose this weighty evidence.

I know something that might surprise Fitzgibbons: One of those opposing scholars is — have you guessed? — Seton Hall professor Dr. Theodora Sirota, the source of his weighty evidence.

Actually, I take that back. Fitzgibbons won’t be surprised at all, because Sirota has already written to him, complaining that he has “mis-reported and misrepresented the results of my 2009 research in this blog.” Not surprisingly, Fitzgibbons has yet to correct his article.

I know this because Dr. Sirota (whom I’ve never met) contacted me herself yesterday, asking for help in exposing what he’s done.

You can read the full text of Sirota’s message here, but let me put it in a nutshell. To support his denunciation of same-sex adoption, Fitzgibbons offers this summary of Sirota’s research:

Researchers interviewed 68 women with gay or bisexual fathers and 68 women with heterosexual fathers. The women (average age 29 in both groups) with gay or bisexual fathers had difficulty with adult attachment issues in three areas: they were less comfortable with closeness and intimacy; they were less able to trust and depend on others; and they experienced more anxiety in relationships compared to the women raised by heterosexual fathers.

The problem is not with what Fitzgibbons said; it’s what he left out: The gay and bisexual fathers in Sirota’s study were married to the mothers.

Dr. Sirota’s article is about the impact of a homosexual father raising a girl in a heterosexual marriage. It has nothing to do with same-sex couples, nothing to do with same-sex adoption at all.

You’d never know that from Fitzgibbon’s piece, and that makes his piece a lie. This kind of sin-by-omission is nothing new; we’ve seen it from far more reputable scholars than this NARTHer. Here, though, we have the original researcher explaining why this is an abuse of her research and asking us for help.

Dr. Sirota’s explanation is crucial. Her data suggest the daughters’ issues were related not so much to their fathers’ sexuality, but to factors like “divorce, maternal anger/bitterness, father absence, etc.” In other words (my words, not Sirota’s), pretty much the results you’d expect when a gay man tries to follow the anti-gay advice of “choosing” to be “straight.”

That’s a provocative finding. In fact, it’s the opposite of what Fitzgibbons is trying to establish. Our opponents claim their concern is all about the kids, but how do they reconcile that with these other things they tell us:

Bans on same-sex marriage don’t discriminate because gays can marry a member of the opposite sex, just like anyone else (recently heard from Michele Bachmann).

The purpose of marriage is procreation.

And yet kids are hurt when gay men live by this philosophy. Given our opponents’ pure and unselfish regard for children, I eagerly await their loud and public reversal of what they’ve pushed on us for long.

So let’s do a quick recap:

Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons presents himself as a science-based mental-health professional.

He distorts another scholar’s work to advance his agenda.

This scholar points out the distortion.

Fitzgibbons fails to correct the distortion.

Two points present themselves, one minor and one major.

First (and this is the minor one), every time our opponents unrepentantly twist someone’s research, they admit they have no honest case. Always point this out — always.

More important, though, is the outrageous immorality of Fitzgibbon’s work. And there’s plenty of outrage for plenty of people: For Dr. Sirota, whose research has been abused. For same-sex parents, who’ve been libeled by that abuse. And, most of all, for Fitzgibbons’ own loyal readers, who are counting on him for the truth.

This is a moral issue, and it’s becoming clear we can better advance our cause on the grounds of morality rather than tolerance. When Ted Olson and David Boies made their case against Prop 8, they did so on a moral basis: Same-sex relationships have the same potential for moral value as opposite-sex pairings, and it is a moral wrong to deny us full citizenship and equality. In this effort, Fitzgibbons becomes our ally, a case study in the moral bankruptcy of our extreme opposition.

Dr. Sirota has asked us to help expose this corruption of her work, and it’s the easiest exposure possible, requiring nothing but a simple declaration of truth. Please help her, either by sharing this, or (even better) by using her words to craft a message of your own.

Another wonderfully written piece exposing yet another horrific example of how those who oppose us (while waving a Bible in the air) are absolute, unrepentant, bald-faced LIARS with no moral authority whatsoever. The only thing I would disagree with is the assertion that the readers of Fitzgibbons’s blog expect the truth from him. They do not. They expect to be told exactly what they want to hear. If they wanted the truth they wouldn’t be going to him in the first place.

These anti-gay people, such as Fitzgibbons (a highly involved Catholic, I understand), always present themselves as representing the pinnacle of moral standards in human behavior, so why must they virtually always rely on deception and lies to support those standards? If absolute truth and moral standards exist, as they define them, wouldn’t you expect them to be supportable by empirical evidence and reason? So, the obvious conclusion is that it’s highly moral to use lies and deception to promote absolute truth, isn’t it?

My colleagues work, Dr. Sirota, besides being interesting and insightful demonstrates how far the academic community still must go in research invovling LGBT parents and families. It is now increasingly possible to evaluate these families and to discuss the implications for the future. Academic scholarship is by definition disinterested in particular outcomes. Pity those that understand this and manipulate findings for selfish and shortsighted ends.

I am very, Very, pleased that Dr.Sirota took this extra step. You see I contacted Dr. Sirota and alerted her to Dr. fitzgibbons misrepresentation of her research. I asked her to enter a comment in the discussion, which if you read the comments she did. Not only Dr. Sirota but Dr. fitzgibbons misrepresented the research of another doctor and I contacted that doctor also. She also said that he was misrepresenting her work, I have it on eMail.

I learned to do this from Dr. Warren Throckmorton, check back with the researchers and see if what is being reported represents their research. I am on vacation at the moment and using a new iPod I received for Christmas or I would write more. ActuAly, just go read the comets in the Fitzgibons article and there you wil see the other DOctors name,.
Again. I am Most PLEASED that Dr. Sirota has taken this extra step. When I get back I will write her and let her know how much I. Appreciate it.
Sorry for the spelling, I haven’t figured out yet where is the darned cursor in an iPad, so I can’t go backwards to correct my spelling errors I se, without re-typing everything.

I doubt it, Darina — he reports Dr. Sirota’s results accurately (though incompletely). His dishonesty comes in tying her results to his claims about same-sex parenting even though her study had nothing to do with same-sex parenting (without explaining any of that to his readers).

I doubt that’s legally actionable (and I don’t think it should be), but he could be subject to sanctions from any of his professional organizations. That’s what happened to Paul Cameron when he misused people’s research — he’s been kicked out more social organizations than I can count.

Oh Rob, great idea! Will you or Tim report him to his state medical board and the American Psychiatric Association? When I get back from vacation I will send you the contact info for that other PhD who responded to me and told me Dr. fitzgibbons misrepresented her data also. Take some screen shots now. I don’t know who wrote this BTB article. For some reason, which I don’t like, when I read BTB on an iPad it doesn’t look like it’s normal web page so I can’t see which one of you at BTB wrote this article.

Thank you for your post, Dr. Sirota. I am hoping for your own sake that you will read my posts that directly bear on your work and consider withdrawing your charge of my misrepresentation of your work. Quite frankly, this looks quite bad for you because my text regarding that work was drawn directly from your abstract. I misrepresented nothing and yours is a false accusation, a serious charge in the world of academia. I am sorry that you are caught in the middle between same-sex advocates and what your findings actually say. Let me remind you of your findings, again drawn from your own abstract: Women with gay or bisexual fathers were significantly less comfortable with closeness and intimacy, less able to trust and depend on others, and experienced more anxiety in relationships than women with heterosexual fathers. Your wishing away these statements does not invalidate them in the least. Never once did I draw any direct conclusions from your study about adoption and those who have told you that have led you astray. They are obviously more concerned about their activist agenda than your reputation. They are more concerned with denigrating my reputation than standing in the truth of your data. And, your academic reputation, I should add, is at-risk now because of this false accusation. I am sorry for being so blunt. Those who have misled you about my statements should come forward with an apology to you and to me rather than hiding in the shadows.

One more point. On page 295 you state the following *interpretation* of what you found: â€œTherefore, it is concluded that the attachment insecurity in study participants with gay or bisexual father is not related to fathersâ€™ homosexuality or bisexuality per se but to relational processes occurring in heterosexually organized families where fathers identify as gay or bisexual.â€ You realize, of course, that you have a *confound* in your study. You cannot tell if the central cause of your findings is homosexuality per se or â€œheterosexually organized families where fathers identify as gay or bisexual.â€ Both of these variables occur simultaneously in the data and you had no way of separating them and studying them independently to safely draw the conclusion that you did. Do you truly intend to make this a *conclusion,* in which case you are making a scientific mistake (because of the confound) or are you willing to soften this and call it an *interpretation,* in which case you are on stronger scientific footing? The latter would be better for your reputation. And if you make this move, which is to your advantage, you might consider withdrawing your charges against me.

So, not only does he refuse to admit his deception, he attacks the author of the study he misrepresents!

Fitzgibbons seems like a pyschopath from his reply. No where did he address the blatant lie he used in his discussion of that study. Instead he accused Dr. Sirota of lying. But then again psychotic and psychopathic about sums up the entire industry of people who lie in the name of demonizing gay people.

So Fitzgibbons is not only a lying bullshitter, but an unrepentant lying bullshitter who also disables comments on his articles?
Standard Operating Procedure for these kinds of folks. In my world that’s called Bully-Coward syndrome.
I predict that the next thing we will have to read is whining about “persecution” and “victimization” because he dared to challenge “mainstream thinking”. Of course he will carefully avoid revealing that the real reason he is being shunned is because he is a mendacious duplicitous liar, but the truth seems to be an optional concept for him, as his most recent comment demonstrates.

Even if we assume that he’s right(let’s ignore his “same-sex advocates” talk and concentrate on his claims about Dr. Sirota’s study for the sake of this hypothesis) and Dr. Sirota can’t prove that she’s identified the cause correctly, in such a scenario he can’t prove that it’s “homosexuality or bisexuality per se” either.

Yeah I had quite a challenge over at that Mercate blog. On the Fitzgibbons article I was entering comments and the admin wasn’t posting my comments. Make sure and expand the comments to read al the replies. Finally when Dr. Sirota herself entered a comment they started letting more of mine go through. It was quite a chore to argue with Fitzgibons as he is a psychiatrist and all but I thought in the end I completely discredited him. Warren Thockmorton even gave me a”Goodjob grasshopper” :) That was hard to do with Fitzgibbons, I often wished there was somebody smarter than me to help me out.

If you want I can use some help over at that same blog in an article that is called, “Straw dogs….” A guy there named Tim is saying that sexual minorities do not have the same values as heterosexuals. + he is saying that sexual minorities should not be permitted to have children. Comments are moderated so keep a cool head. It is hard to argue with several people there as they have advanced college degrees.

So you’re saying that Fitzgibbons interpreted the results of an experiment in a way that Sirota didn’t approve. But Sirota doesn’t own those results. Part of the scientific process involves publishing results so that others can develop different interpretations of them.

Sirota showed problems for daughters arising from homosexual fathers. In same sex marriage the father is also homosexual. Fitzgibbon is therefore correct in expressing concern about same sex marriage.

Its rare enough that anyone in the social sciences dares to raise issues with regard to a downside to homosexuality. It’s disappointing to see a blogger out to silence someone like Fitzgibbon for presenting a different opinion on a research result.

“Sirota showed problems for daughters arising from homosexual fathers. In same sex marriage the father is also homosexual. Fitzgibbon is therefore correct in expressing concern about same sex marriage.”

No, he is not correct. You have to do several backflips and somersaults to arrive at his conclusion, not to mention ignore evidence or very plausible possibilities that contradict that conclusion. For example, Fitzgibbons cannot exclude the possibility that gay men in heterosexual relationships are the problem (which would actually be a more intuitive conclusion). There is, to date, STILL no evidence that same-sex parenting is worse than opposite-sex parenting, except for these rather creative interpretations of the data.

Damav said “In same sex marriage the father is also homosexual. Fitzgibbon is therefore correct in expressing concern about same sex marriage.”.

Wrong. Any marriage of a gay man to a woman is going to have serious problems. It is probable that the poor outcomes for the children of such marriages are due to strife in the marriage itself rather than the father’s gayness. Such strife wouldn’t be present anywhere near as often in a same sex marriage so there is no way one can say this study justifies concerns for same sex parenting. On top of that dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of studies have shown that the children of same sex parents do just as well, if not better than the children of opposite sex parents. To claim this studie shows gay adoption is a bad idea is dishonest and irresponsible.

Oh, and one more thing. To remove the “homosexual” from the context in which the study was conducted (i.e. a heterosexual marriage!) and extend the conclusions to “homosexuals” in same-sex relationships strikes me as rather sloppy and un-nuanced.

And these people delude themselves into believing they are the paragons of science and rigorous methodology if only the “activists” would stop persecuting them. Give me a break.

DaMav: “It’s disappointing to see a blogger out to silence someone like Fitzgibbon for presenting a different opinion on a research result.”

And it’s disappointing to see you out to silence a blogger like me for presenting a different opinion on Fitzgibbon’s article.

Okay, I couldn’t type that with a straight face.

Seriously, though, I see this attitude all too often on the anti-gay right. They can toss egregious and ill-reasoned insults our way and they’re just expressing their opinion or practicing religious liberty — and I do stand up for their right to do that! — but if we answer back with any vigor, then we’re trying to “silence” them. Sorry, DeMav, it’s called vigorous debate, and it’s a grand American tradition.

I agree that there are different ways to view the data. Have at it. You won’t see me demanding that people with different points of view than mine be silenced.

@cowboy, you say “It’s not silencing anyone”. But how else to interpret some of the comments:

“Oh Rob, great idea! Will you or Tim report him to his state medical board and the American Psychiatric Association?”

“Is it possible for Dr. Sirota to take any legal action against him?”

In fact the original post seems to be calling for an attack campaign against, not just the opinions of the dissident Fitzgibbon but Fitzgibbon himself. This sounds more like a particularly vicious politics to silence dissent than any type of scholarly discourse.

EXCERPT
“The consensus among researchers is that the sexual abuse of children is not a question of sexual â€˜orientation,â€™ whether heterosexual or homosexual, but of a disordered attraction or â€˜fixation,â€™â€ Fr. Stock added.

However, a U.S. psychiatrist with experience in treating priests with pedophilia disagrees that there is no link between homosexuality and sexual abuse of children. â€œCardinal Bertone’s comments are supported completely by the John Jay study report and by clinical experience,â€ Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons told CNA. â€œIn fact, every priest whom I treated who was involved with children sexually had previously been involved in adult homosexual relationships.â€

Fitzgibbons, who has been the director of Comprehensive Counseling Center in West Conshohocken, Penn. since 1988, has worked extensively with individuals suffering from same sex attraction (SSA) and priests accused of pedophilia. He also presently serves as a consultant to the Congregation for the Clergy at the Holy See.

In his 2002 â€œLetter to Catholic Bishops,â€ Fitzgibbons identified priests prone to sexual abuse as having suffered â€œprofound emotional painâ€ during childhood due to loneliness, problems in their relationships with their fathers, rejection by their peers, lack of male confidence, and poor self image or body image. Fitzgibbons said that these experiences lead priests especially to direct their sadness and anger towards the Church, her teachings on sexual morality, and the Magisterium. “

Do these examples sound like a logical argument directed at the facts of the matter and not the individual?

â€œâ€¦the outrageous immorality of Fitzgibbonâ€™s work.â€

“…it’s becoming clear we can better advance our cause on the grounds of morality rather than tolerance.”

Yes, to be sure. That’s why I referred to â€œthe outrageous immorality of Fitzgibbonâ€™s work.â€ And I’m surprised you don’t agree. In its discussion of homosexuality, the anti-gay right often makes a careful distinction between denouncing someone’s actions versus denouncing the human being.

And I’m still waiting for you to explain why my request that people publicize and refute his work is the same as trying to silence him. It’s quite the opposite, actually, when you think about it.

EXCERPT
“A Pennsylvania psychiatrist whose evaluation led Bishop Robert Finn to keep the Rev. Shawn Ratigan in ministry is an adviser to a group that supports priests accused of sexual abuse.

Richard Fitzgibbons, who examined Ratigan in January after disturbing photographs of children were found on the priestâ€™s computer, is an adviser to Opus Bono Sacerdotii, according to the groupâ€™s website. The nonprofit organization provides services to accused and imprisoned priests, including financial, legal and emotional support.

After his evaluation, Fitzgibbons told Finn that Ratigan was not a pedophile and that his pornography problem was a result of loneliness and depression, according to a report commissioned by the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese.

Finn relied on Fitzgibbonsâ€™ opinion in his decision to send Ratigan to a Vincentian mission house in Independence, where he remained a priest and allegedly continued to take lewd photographs of children, the report said.

Ratigan now faces child pornography charges in Clay County and federal court.

News of Fitzgibbonsâ€™ connection to Opus Bono Sacerdotii â€” whose name means â€œwork for the good of the priesthoodâ€ â€” stunned the attorney who represents several of Ratiganâ€™s alleged victims.”

EXCERPT
“Bishop Robert Finn on Tuesday avoided a possible criminal misdemeanor indictment in his handling of a priest facing child pornography charges by agreeing to enter into a diversion program with the Clay County prosecutor.

Authorities have pledged not to prosecute Finn, the leader of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, if he lives up to the terms of a five-year diversion agreement.

Clay County Prosecutor Daniel L. White also announced that a grand jury had indicted the Rev. Shawn F. Ratigan on three counts of possessing child pornography.”

EXCERPT
“Bishop Robert Finn has many powerful friends on the Catholic Right. As a hard charging leader of what he has called “the church militant” and one of four American Opus Dei bishops, Finn is clearly one of their own. Nevertheless, it extraordinary that his allies have chosen to side with an element in the institutional church obsessed with unquestioned authority and against Catholic children and their families.

While Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is ubiquitous, he is not the only one rallying to defend Finn’s handling of alleged child abuser Fr. Shawn Ratigan. It is time to throw open the shutters and allow some daylight into the shadows and dark corners of Catholic neoconservatism. ”

EXCERPT
“Opus Bono Sacerdotii (OBS) describes, its mission…..BishopAccountability.org describes OBS co-founders Joseph Maher and Paul Barron as “members of Legatus.” This is not unusual. Based in Monaghan’s hometown of Detroit, Michigan, many of the key members of Legatus are also affiliated with the Monahan-founded or funded organizations, notably the ultra orthodox Ave Maria University (“AMU”), in Naples, Florida. These include such Catholic Right luminaries as the late neocon activist Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Fr. Thomas G. Guarino, and Fr. Michael Orsi.

A stern-looking Donohue is pictured on the OBS homepage next to a link to his piece, “Straight Talk about the Catholic Church and SNAP Exposed.”..”

“However, a U.S. psychiatrist with experience in treating priests with pedophilia disagrees that there is no link between homosexuality and sexual abuse of children. â€œCardinal Bertoneâ€™s comments are supported completely by the John Jay study report and by clinical experience,â€ Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons told CNA. â€œIn fact, every priest whom I treated who was involved with children sexually had previously been involved in adult homosexual relationships.â€

And yet here is our very own Jkim burroway on that exact same report, 11/17/09:

How about this?

A preliminary report commissioned by the nationâ€™s Roman Catholic bishops to investigate the clergy sex abuse scandal has found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the lead authors of the study said Tuesday.

The full report by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice wonâ€™t be completed until the end of next year. But the authors said their evidence to date found no data indicating that homosexuality was a predictor of abuse.

â€œWhat we are suggesting is that the idea of sexual identity be separated from the problem of sexual abuse,â€ said Margaret Smith of John Jay College, in a speech to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. â€œAt this point, we do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now.â€

It looks like the reportâ€™s authors are coming to the same conclusions I did when I tackled the question in our report, â€œTesting the Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?â€I poured through the professional literature and found no connection between homosexuality and child molestation. The Catholic Bishops commissioned a $2 million study in response to the clerical sexual abuse scandals which came to the same conclusion. Hereâ€™s the money quote:

At the meeting Tuesday, Bishop Edward Braxton of the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., asked the researchers whether their study indicated that homosexuality should be considered when evaluating a candidate for the priesthood. In 2005, the Vatican issued a policy statement that men with â€œdeep-seatedâ€ attraction to other men should be barred from the priesthood.

Smith said: â€œIf that exclusion were based on the fact that that person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.â€

Last year, Pope Benedict XVI drew a distinction between homosexuality and pedophelia, saying â€œI would not speak at this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia which is another thing. And we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry.â€ Yet the Vaticanâ€™s instructions barring gay men from entering holy orders unless they had â€œovercomeâ€ for at least three years still stands.

DaMav: please give examples of Dr. Fitzgibbons being silenced or at risk of it?

Please give examples of ANYONE with objections to the equality of gay people being silenced. ANYWHERE!

From my chair, no such thing is occurring, indeed, Dr. Fitz has a venue online, from which to say or do whatever he wants.
Anti gay Christians have their own broadcast networks from which speak openly and many are invited into forums by the main stream media in which to speak their views.

Silenced?
Hardly. Even as the entire of the gay community is maligned, misrepresented, libeled, slandered and threatened with exclusion from the Constitution, the Bill of Rights…even as children torment another to the point of suicide or murder because the anti gay have been ‘silenced’.

If ONLY you’d all just STFU, but alas…it’s IMPOSSIBLE to silence any of you!

StraightGrandmother:
You did a masterful job in challenging Fitzgibbons. I enjoyed reading the entire thread and his responses to you and Dr. Sirota. I was wondering what your educational background was and if I could pick your remarkable brain.

I would LOVE to talk to you on the phone. Let’s figure out a way to do that. I have a Facebook page so please look me up and leave your info.

You ROCK! And what LightningBaltimore said, I love you too.
Just LOVE you.

DaMav, every denunciation of Fitzgibbon’s work is 100% fitting. His disgusting lie and his refusal to own up to it and instead accuse the honest researcher of dishonesty is about as immoral as it gets.
For a supposed scholar to reference a work and completely lie right away about what the work was about is a serious academic charge. Fitzgibbons is right about that. Except he was the one who committed it. It’s such a shame isn’t it? How far people like you go to keep defending your negative stereotyping and prejudice against gay people. So far, you try to defend blatant fraud on the part of your researchers. But I can see how you actually think he can be defended. After all, you demonstrated your own extreme failure in logic when you claimed that in a situation where a closeted homosexual marries an unsuspecting woman, while probably leading a double life, his homosexuality alone is what makes him a bad parent, and therefore open and honest homosexuals who are committed to a same sex partner and not leading a double life away from his partner and kids must be an equally bad parent. It’s because folks like you can’t see past the word “homosexual.” And as soon as you see one of those you label him as bad, and start working backwards to find any loosely-related evidence that he is wrong or immoral or bad, and your circular logic will always bring you back to “because he’s homosexual, and homosexuals are bad people.”

And through all the studies with small samples of gay people, you use the results to paint all gay people with the same broad brush. You find a study about gay men cheating and you apply that to lesbians. Guess what, I can find studies that say men in general cheat more than women. Do I use the better numbers for women to say only women should be allowed to marry or adopt, leaving us only with lesbian couples who have those rights, and not even straight couples? No. That would be utterly ridiculous. It would be using a sample of men to stereotype men as a whole, and exclude even those upstanding men who never cheat and are great fathers. Yet, that’s the same thing the religious right does to same sex couples. I found this study that says out of 150 gay men, more of them admitted cheating than claimed to be faithful to their partners. Now let’s punish even the faithful ones by deeming all gay relationships inferior and using this to deny them the opportunity to have a legal marriage or become a legal guardian to a child. It’s glorified stereotyping. It’s hogwash and does not deserve the label of “acedemic.”

@ Straight Grandmother, I found that thread where you challenged Fitzgibbons. I found it frustrating. Time and again, he went all over the place and refused over and over to admit misrepresenting Dr. Sirota’s work. I read the whole piece too. Even if he represented every study correctly, it’s a faulty piece, with faulty logic. Every study is a sample of the population and in no study were 100% percent of the samples of homosexuals attributed negative results/behaviors. Therefore, his conclusion seems to be to advocate a ban on all same-sex couples adopting because he found some negative stuff about SOME of the homosexuals studied out of small samples of homosexuals. Do we ban all straight couples from adopting since we know for a fact that some of those homes will be problematic. All we have to do is watch the news to see stories of children being abused in opposite-sex parents’ homes. Let’s start a campaign to end all adoption, since nobody can be trusted. Nope, that sick standard is only applied to gays. And I’m not surprised this cleared a priest. His moral character is quite obvious through his misrepresentation of Dr. Sirota’s work with the goal of demonizing gay people.

There are three relationship structures that are introduced into the discussion, two by Sirota, one by Fitzgibbons.

Group A: opposite-sex marriage with both heterosexual partners

Group B: opposite-sex marriage with heterosexual mother and homosexual father

Group X: same-sex marriage

Sirota found Group B less well functioning than Group A. From this, Fitzgibbons concluded that Group X must also be less well functioning than Group A.

Sirota did not compare Group A to Group X, and so that conclusion is, at best, an extension of Sirota’s work, a secondary hypothesis. When Fitzgibbons presented Sirota’s work as evidence that “children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father” he was engaging in fraud.

Nonetheless, it would not be an inappropriate hypothesis to consider based on Sirota’s work were it not for three factors:

1. Fitzgibbons did not present Sirota’s position and inform his readers that his hypothesis differed from her own. That, in and of itself, is a discourtesy which – in the scientific community – comes close to being a grave insult.

But Fitzgibbons goes further – he implies that his conclusions are not his own creation but are the conclusions of the researchers. Looking at the paragraph in question it is impossible to guess that Sirota actually came to opposite conclusion than that of Fitzgibbons. (And based on the history of NARTH, it is likely that many if not all of the other sources are similarly distorted).

It is not unheard of, or even unprofessional, for differing conclusions to be found in another researcher’s work. However it is the height of unprofessionality to present someone else’s work with one’s one interpretation and not disclose such a difference.

2. We are not without research on the subject. Significant research has been performed on the functioning of same-sex relationships and the conclusion is that there is no material difference.

To contradict the accepted understanding, the research would have to directly address the accepted understanding. To assert that the known comparison between Group A and Group X was incorrect, one must present a comparison between Group A and Group X that disagrees with the accepted understanding. Unable to do so honestly, Fitzgibbons pretended to do so.

3. In order to make his point, Fitzgibbons needed to find a similarity between Group B and Group X that was not present in Group A. Thus he could assert that Group X is like Group B. He found a convenient similarity: the presence of a homosexual male in the relationship.

To do so, he ignored a more obvious similarity between Group A and Group X.

Much research has concluded that relationship stability between parents impacts children. This dynamic was evident, obvious, and glaring. It was, in fact, the focus of Sirota’s conclusions. And though Sirota did not address Group X, an intuitive and logical association would be to look at relational discord and find Group A and Group X to be similar in that they both lack the tension of orientation disparity.

Fitzgibbons deliberately ignored that obvious conclusion and selected another attribute, one that supported his own personal biases.

Those who argue that “the presence of a homosexual male” is the only attribute on which to apply the conclusions could equally argue that “the presence of people with toes” or “today is Thursday” are relevant.

A willful disregard for the scientific process and for logic in the quest for validation of one’s presumptions illustrates not only a fear of truth but a contempt for reality. It is a fear and contempt shared by Fitzgibbons and DaMav alike. But when the quest is for the validation of one’s biases engage in an effort to deny freedom or equality to others, then it becomes bigotry.

This disregard for evidence and logic can, at times, be the product of ignorance or stupidity. However, when it is intentional – as the preponderance of evidence suggests in this instance – then it is, as Rob stated, outrageously immoral.

Sure… except that the John Jay study report found exactly the opposite of what Fitzgibbons claims that it says.

And thanks for the additional research. Based on his work to keep child molesters in situations in which they would have continued access to children, “morally depraved” may be too kind a term for Fitzgibbons and we certainly should not be surprised at the outrageousness of his immorality in the realm of his profession.

Fraud and distortion pale in comparison to unleashing pedophiles on unsuspecting children.

I’m not sure why we should not, indeed, seek to “silence” the statements of Fitzgibbons. Not, of course, to deprive him of his right to any nonsense he wishes to utter, but to silence lies in the way that lies are always silenced: by demanding evidence and presenting the truth.

We don’t let libel go “unsilenced”. When absurd assertions are made about, say, a politician’s past, naturally he insists that the accuser put up or shut up.

That is what we are doing here. We are not silencing Fitzgibbons, but rather we are challenging his lies and insisting that he stop libeling us.

I am proud to say that I just adopted my daughter in New Hampshire today. I’m a gay parent and proud of it. I am busy teaching her honesty and compassion so that she can go spread it through the world in her own time. There’s my “gay agenda”. I LOVE being a parent and I happen to think we’re pretty good at it. I encourage as many people as possible to expose these organizations for their lies. Tell your family and your friends and as many people as will listen.

Yes, Karen…congratulations. I am so very happy for you and your daughter!

I have the good fortune of knowing many gay parents, and their offspring. Not just knowing, but having close friendship, I’m glad to say. Sometimes I can’t get over how fast the kids grew up. How interesting they are, and very loving themselves. Someone like me, who doesn’t have any children, gets to play ‘aunt’ to quite a few, I felt just as special to be included so generously in their lives.
MY worst fears were when these kids became teenagers and started driving.

I’m also, through my job with the police, keenly aware of how many kids straight people have messed up. The jails and foster care and welfare rolls speak for themselves. Few people consider the damage straight parents have done to their gay kids through the urging of people in NARTH.

Another distortion that Dr. Nicolosi is guilty of, and that World Net Daily, is correlating the lack of a father figure with the incarcerated. True, that many inmates reported either being neglected, abandoned by their biological fathers or abused by men, NOT their biological fathers.

But NOWHERE did they report it was because they had two moms who were lesbians.
There was no research that reported that the rates of the incarcerated were because of the incompetence of GAY parents, at all.

But Nicolosi’s ‘research’ implied also that same sex homes without fathers, was a contributor to a young person’s risk of criminality and incarceration.
He didn’t do this out of ignorance or understandable oversight.
It was as deliberate as Dr. Fitzgibbons behavior.
All of which to smear gays and lesbians as unfit to be parents, therefore unfit to be married.

Someone should write another article concerning Sirotaâ€™s work claiming that it proves those â€œex-gaysâ€ should never marry (or if they do should not have children) because their natural-born or adopted children will end up with attachment disorders. Then we can see how Fitzgibbons thinks about that.

EXCERPT
â€œFather Harvey wrote in 1986, â€œfor several years I have been engaged in what is best described as crisis intervention, working with clinical psychologist John F. Kinnane, of Catholic University, Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons of Philadelphia, and with treatment centers in the rehabilitation of clerics and religious who had become emotionally and sexually involved with boys or adolescent malesâ€¦ we have been able to share our perception with them and to help fourteen clerics get some measure of control over their lives.â€ (The Homosexual Person, page 226, Ignatius Press)â€

The religious right has worked hard to misrepresent homosexuals as heterosexuals who happen to have an immoral fetish for the same-sex.
With this inaccurate, distorted, and damaging perspective of homosexuality, the difference between Timothy’s Group A and Group B above can be reduced to the man’s “immoral same-sex fetish”

My forthcoming article in the Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender discusses in excruciating detail how NARTH and other similar groups arguably have played fast and loose with scientific data for decades (available in draft form for free download at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905606).

Wow, this is Fitzgibbons’ other material on MercatorNet, which contains the following gem: “If a little boy by age 3 or 4 doesn’t have eye-hand co-ordination, by age 7 most of his friends are females; he doesn’t feel confident to enter into the male world and fears being rejected. And then by age 10 or 12 they begin to be attracted to males who have the body and the physical abilities they so desperately want.

Reading these comments is one of the most rewarding things I have done in a long time. Oh how I wished any one of you smarter than me people could have joined me at the time in that discussion with Fitzgibbons. If I could have just had an Erin, or Ben in Oakland or the Goddess Regan DuCase or Tim, or Rob or really any one of you there with me it would have been so much better. I am not going to repeat that mistake again, the next time this happens I am going to run over here and ask for help.

Now I want to inspire you, but not tip my hand. I am working on two projects that are well, just great. I believe both of these projects will be influential, but one of them is truly inspired. I learned from each and every one of you, and you have inspired me. Shortly I am going to pay you back BIG Time.

Regan DuCase I have sent private e-mails months ago to Tim, Jim, and Rob strongly urging them to take you on as a regular blogger here. I love your fire, you intellect and your street smarts. Check your facebook messages from about 2 months ago as I sent you a message, it is under my real name. You never replied, to my utter sadness.

Now I need help! At that same blog Mercater.net search for an article that starts with “Straw Dogs…” I am trying to discuss with a man named Tim that sexual minorities Do have the same values as heterosexual couples, he doesn’t think they do. I need help over ther, so please help me out. I need help!

I find it highly amusing the way that Dr Fitzgibbons tries to exonerate himself from the thoroughly justified charge of misrepresentation by engaging in further misrepresentation and even has the gall to tell Dr Sirota that it is HER academic reputation which is now at stake. As Thomas Paine remarked about fraud, â€œas with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on.â€

But what about the other study? The one that appeared in Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons’ article before the Sirota story?

“There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.

In 1996 a well-designed study of 174 primary school children in Australia â€“ 58 children in married families, 58 in families headed by cohabitating heterosexuals and 58 in home with homosexual unions â€“ suggested that married couples offered the best environment for a child’s social and education environment. Cohabiting couples were second best and homosexual couples came last.”

Is this study valid? If so, it corroborates Dr. Fitzgibbons’ point. If not, then it needs to be retracted along with the Sirota study.

â€œ1 A study from Australia (Sarantakos, 1996) has been cited as demonstrating deficits among children raised by gay and lesbian parents in Australia compared to children raised by heterosexual couples. The anomalous results reported by this studyâ€“which contradict the accumulated body of research findings in this fieldâ€“are attributable to idiosyncrasies in its sample and methodologies and are therefore not reliable. An expert reading of the Sarantakos article reveals that certain characteristics of its methodology and sample are highly likely to have skewed the results and rendered them an invalid indicator of the well-being of children raised by gay and lesbian parents in at least three respects:
1.
The children raised by gay and lesbian parents experienced unusually high levels of extreme social ostracism and overt hostility from other children and parents, which probably accounted for the formerâ€™s lower levels of interaction and social integration with peers (see pp. 25-26);

2.
Nearly all indicators of the childrenâ€™s functioning were based on subjective reports by teachers, who, as noted repeatedly by the author, may have been biased (see pp. 24, 26, & 30); and

3.
Most or all of the children being raised by gay and lesbian parents, but not the children being raised by heterosexual married parents, had experienced parental divorce, which is known to correlate with poor adjustment and academic performance.

Indeed, although the differences Sarantakos observed among the children are anomalous in the context of research on parentsâ€™ sexual orientation, they are highly consistent with findings from studies of the effects of parental divorce on children (see, e.g., Amato, 2001, and Amato & Keith, 1991). Children Australia is a regional journal that is not widely known outside Australia. As such, it cannot be considered a source upon which one should rely for understanding the state of scientific knowledge in this field, particularly when the results contradict those that have been repeatedly replicated in studies published in better known scientific journals. In summary, the Sarantakos study does not undermine the consistent pattern of results reported in other empirical studies addressing this topic.

Dammit! I see Priya found the same APA article while I was researching and preparing this response. :) Here it is anyway:

Boy, oh, boy do anti-gay groups love that paper! Almost every reference I could find to it on the ‘net was from an anti-gay source. I wonder if anyone’s actually read it, though? I searched and searched and could not find a copy on-line, though I did find the website for “Children Australia” and found I could mailorder a copy for $14AU.

I did find other summaries of the paper, however. Once again, Fitzgibbons has eliminated important details. The study in question did not track children adopted by same-sex couples. All 58 children from same-sex households were the product of previous opposite-sex marriages. In other words, Sarantakos compared children of married parents, of never-married parents, and of divorced parents now cohabiting. In addition, Sarantakos conducted his research primarily by interviewing the teachers of the children in question. Teachers being human (well, most of them), there is certainly a possibility that some might have biases against children living in same-sex households, thus leading to them possibly rating said children lower (conciously or subconsciously). According to what I could find, Sarantakos merely asked the children about discipline in the home and how much freedom they were allowed by their parents.

After writing the above, I checked the APA website for references to Sarantakos’s work. I found one article, and he was mentioned in a footnote on page 6:

A study from Australia (Sarantakos, 1996) has been cited as demonstrating deficits among children raised by gay and lesbian parents in Australia compared to children raised by heterosexual couples. The anomalous results reported by this study–which contradict the accumulated body of research findings in this field–are attributable to idiosyncrasies in its sample and methodologies and are therefore not reliable. An expert reading of the Sarantakos article reveals that certain characteristics of its methodology and sample are highly likely to have skewed the results and rendered them an invalid indicator of the well-being of children raised by gay and lesbian parents in at least three respects: (1) the children raised by gay and lesbian parents experienced unusually high levels of extreme social ostracism and overt hostility from other children and parents, which probably accounted for the former’s lower levels of interaction and social integration with peers (see pp. 25-26); (2) nearly all indicators of the children’s functioning were based on subjective reports by teachers, who, as noted repeatedly by the author, may have been biased (see pp. 24, 26, & 30); and (3) most or all of the children being raised by gay and lesbian parents, but not the children being raised by heterosexual married parents, had experienced parental divorce, which is known to correlate with poor adjustment and academic performance. Indeed, although the differences Sarantakos observed among the children are anomalous in the context of research on parents’ sexual orientation, they are highly consistent with findings from studies of the effects of parental divorce on children (see, e.g., Amato, 2001, and Amato & Keith, 1991). Children Australia is a regional journal that is not widely known outside Australia. As such, it cannot be considered a source upon which one should rely for understanding the state of scientific knowledge in this field, particularly when the results contradict those that have been repeatedly replicated in studies published in better known scientific journals. In summary, the Sarantakos study does not undermine the consistent pattern of results reported in other empirical studies addressing this topic.

Some nonscientific organizations have attempted to convince courts that there is an actual scientific dispute in this area by citing research performed by Paul Cameron as supporting the existence of deficits in gay and lesbian parents or their children compared to heterosexual parents or their children. In fact, there is no scientific evidence of such deficits. Cameron’s research is methodologically suspect. His key findings in this area have not been replicated and are contradicted by the reputable published research. Unlike research that makes a contribution to science, his key findings and conclusions have rarely been cited by subsequent scientific studies published in peer-reviewed journals as informing their scientific inquiry. For a detailed critique of the research project on which Cameron has based many of his published papers, see Herek (1998).

And Jeremiah, dear, are you just doing another one of your hit-and-runs, or are you finally going to admit that you are a shill for NARTH and you frankly don’t give a small damn about the lies you tell and the intellectual dishonesty you display,

Here’s a link to the Australian government’s Human Rights Commission site and their take on the Sarantakos study. They repeat some of the same points the APA made concerning the possible bias of the teacher, the effects of divorce, etc. On the other hand, unlike the APA, they support Sarantakos cautious conclusion that “married couples seem to offer the best environmenÂ­t for a childâ€™s social and educationaÂ­l developmenÂ­t.”

The paper you cite is not by “the Australian human rights commission” and is most decidedly NOT “their take”. It is an argument submitted by Festival Of Light Australia, a ‘family values’ (I.e. anti-gay) organization which was seeking to ensure that governmental policy discriminated (their word) against gay couples.

If a child has heterosexual parents, and benefits from them being married, then a child with homosexual parents would have to benefit from them being married. Could anyone legitimately argue otherwise? The question is not whether homosexuals have children. They have, they do, and they will. The question is if those children benefit from those parents being married. They unquestionably do. When children benefit, society always benefits.

Timothy, I need to apologize to you as I did to Erin on another website.

I am thoroughly embarrassed. I did not realize that the Australian government’s Human Rights Commission posted submissions, pro or con, on a variety of issues, which was my grave mistake. The article simply being on their site did not reflect their endorsement or rejection of its contents.

Richard, I would agree with your statement that “if a child has heterosexual parents, and benefits from them being married, then a child with homosexual parents would have to benefit from them being married” provided no physiological, functional, and psychological differences existed between human males and females.

And the question remains to what degree would the children benefit.

There are same-sex marriage activists who agree with prohibiting and denying polygamous marriages (even those including bisexuals), incestuous marriages, bigamous marriages, and so on, even though the recognition of such marriages would benefit the children involved.

Whether or not there are “physiological, functional, and psychological differences existed between human males and females”, it is irrefutably true that children of same sex couples would achieve legal and social benefits from the marriage of their parents.

This is not true of your other examples.

I know that it is greatly tempting to make comparisons of same sex couples to polyamory, bestiality, incest, necrophilia, and all other sorts of things of which you disapprove. However, it may be wise to note that such tactics do not win arguments here or gain you admirers.

BTB readers are familiar with such tactics (did you really think such arguments novel?) and recognize that the groupings are not based on actual shared attributes but rather on shared disgust. It is nothing more than a recitation of relationships that you dislike and including same-sex couples is rooted in your own personal bigotries and not at all in any characteristics that same-sex couple actually have in common with these other forms.

Jeremiah, thank you for your apology. At first glance it really does look like they posted that on their website, so I thought they wrote it at first too. It was an honest mistake. But since we’re here debating this, I disagree that the physical differences between male and female are pertinent in raising a child. As for the emotional and psychological difference between men and women, yes we can see they have those differences as well, however as they pertain to child-rearing, I wonder what psychological or emotional state a woman can have that a man can’t also have and vice versa. What is the difference that is so vital to raising a healthy, happy child. I know their are traits that are often attributed to men that some of my lesbian friends seem to possess. I also know having a child can make a man gay or straight soften up and become more nurturing. I know someone who was raised by heterosexual parents, but her father was the stay-at home partner, cooking and cleaning and watching the kids, because he was a pastor and worked mostly at night or on sundays. Her mother was the breadwinner. Her mother is unmistakenly also the dominant partner. She is one of those type A control freaks. My friend grew up to be very successful and a very well-adjusted person: happy, hard-working, and a good sense of humor. She has a Masters degree and is a research scientist. Why, if the gender characteristics within heterosexuals alone can be so flexible, is it so hard to accept that gays and lesbians, who already have flexible gender characteristics, can fill in those roles as a couple. I keep hearing this argument that men and women bring their own special unique qualities, but again, you guys never say what those are. I’m sure you believe in them because you see they’ve worked out for a lot of kids, but having same sex parents has worked out for other kids. Why disregard their experience?

The studies that illustrate differences between men and women speak to heterosexual men and women. When gay people are included in the studies, they are generally found to have some characteristics of each.

If we rely on the studies in the way that Jeremiah insists, then the logical conclusion is that when discussing heterosexuals, children benefit from having both a male and female parent. Thus, using ONLY the research, it would be logical to ban heterosexuals from same-sex marriage. I think it an amusing “compromise” that perhaps we should offer.

but no, I’m not stalking you.But when i see you post, I know who you are and what you will say. And I’m going to be there each time to let people know about you

you can fool the somewhat more gullible and less informed people in general over at Huffpost.

But i would really suggest to you that you not try it here, or at TWO, or ex-gay watch, or any place that people with brains, education, and familiarity with the tactics of the antigay set are writing. Because we won’t let you get away with it.

I find it interesting that you take the same tack that Maggie Gallagher and the whole of the anti-ex-gay industry take whenever we stand up to you. You’re the victims, we’re the man-on-dog extremists. In my case, you accuse me of e-stalking you.

Honey, i don’t have the time or the inclination. Antigay bigots are cut-rate at a dime a dozen. But if i see you post, and you are stating one of your usual opposed-to-extremism-and-for-moderation statements, you can bet I’ll be there.

And who knows? Maybe someday, you’ll start seeing gay people as your equals and not your enemy, whether you do it for money, for your own issues, or out of the darkness of your heart.

To add to what I said before about the lack of importance of physical sex and the flexibility of gender characteristics in both sexes in raising kids: (I wrote this to Jeremiah on another board when he claimed he wouldn’t be able to produce a study that satisfied me because it wouldn’t be from a gay friendly organiztion). These groups that back us up and support our right to be parents aren’t gay organizations. We have the support of nationwide scientific communities, folks who have extensive reseach experience and PhD’s. These are groups used to label homosexuals as disordered, but had to admit they were wrong after further research, and in getting to know homosexuals, learning it was more than a behavior. All groups that study human biology, sexuality, anthropology, pyschology, sociology, and history agree that same sex attractions are a natural variation of human sexuality, that only affects who we are attracted to. We are just as functional as everyone else, and just as capable to raise children.

No study ever produced on this matter will study a significantly large enough sample of the population or go into every personal detail of someone’s abilities, behaviors, or values enough to adequately show a difference between the population of children raised by same sex couples vs those raised by opposite sex couples. And the studies we do have, whether they show negative or positive results for children w/ same sex parents, don’t definitively show that the parents’ gender make-up or orientation made the difference.

Most importantly, I would like the gay parents-doubters to consider this: There is such a significantly high number of heterosexual women bearing children they can’t keep, and such a significantly low number of heterosexual married couples willing and able to adopt, that kids are still being stuck in foster homes and group homes and are aging out of the system without a permanent family to fund college or come home to. The studies we have that both reflect positively and negatively on gay parenting, are cloudy at best, and don’t show for sure that the parents’ sex makes a huge difference. So how then is it a moral position to take those willing and able same sex couples out of the mix, therefore leaving less places for these kids to go? I believe this all comes down to a deeper prejudice and misunderstanding of gay people than these folks let on, because they are trying to appear to be reasonable and intellectual. They are still discarding the truth that human sexuality is not simply a learned behavior. They are still worried that gay parents are simply trying to recruit children. Or worse, they’re still viewing us as deviant to the point they can’t separate us from child molesters. That is of course, bunk. There is one case of two men adopting a boy to then horribly sexually abuse him, but there are many many more cases of heterosexual parents, especially heterosexual men abusing adopted children both physically and sexually. So if we’re going to follow Fitzgibbon’s logic once again, it looks like the common denominator in the majority of sex abuse cases is men. Therefore, we should ban all men and only let lesbian couples adopt. Sound right? Of course not.

Erin, I wrote a short response on Huffington which does not cover every point you brought up here but relates my personal opinion on the issue of adoption.

I will just make one comment. You wrote, “I disagree that the physical differences between male and female are pertinent in raising a child.” However, our physical bodies do inform our life experiences and personal character, which is why the sexes physically interact differently with children (way to hold, eye contact, speech, discipline, emotional interrelation, etc.) and these interactions are significant and complementary between fathers and mothers. I believe these differences to be pertinent in helping to develop a well-rounded child.

(And I hope no one will attempt to waste their time in writing about my convictions about adoption since I have not offered any here.)

The problem with it is similar to so many of the things you have to say, it more or less sounds reasonable, until you have to think about it. Then it falls apart.

The biggest problem is the unstated assumption that all men are exactly alike,and all women are exactly alike, and that there is some sort of psycho-socio-spiritual complementarity between men and women that is reflected in the physical union of penis and vagina.

And that is nonsense, but it is very catholic. Am I getting close to the mark?

Being a man and a woman together only makes you fit to reproduce. It says nothing about your ability to parent,to love, or to be a decent human being. Especially the latter, as so many antigay people have demonstrated.

A single woman that does a fine job of raising a son, or the gay couples overwhelmingly represented in the literature that have also done a fine job of raising their children, compared the the many mixed gender couples that shouldn’t be allowed to raise a tomato, let alone a human being, shows the fallacy of that line of thinking.

A single mother or single father that does a fine job of raising a child of whatever gender is what we call a GREAT parent. We don’t say “well, it would have been better if you had an opposite sex parent there” we congratulate and thank them for being good parents.

My late partner’s useless father molested two of his six children that we know about, before a abandoning the family when he was 14, leaving his mother to raise six children on a coffee shop waitress salary in rural Maine. Other than financially, they were better off.

The hundreds and hundreds of studies on the subject all show that gay people in general make good parents, t least as good as opposite sex parents.. Of course, not your “well designed” but otherwise bogus Australian studies. My limited sample of people I know with children all confirm this. Not studies, but certainly my experience.

Your argument seems to be that a gay man makes a lousy mother. I can tell you this from my many years I in the social services field.

Your argument really falls apart when you consider rob’s article that started this discussion. These children in the study you claim proves that gay people do not make good parents were in fact opposite sex marriages. You know, each gender bringing their own special attributes to that only men and women together can bring?

Exactly the situation that you claim ought to be the optimal one for raising children. But it isn’t, and you want to blame it one the fact that one of the parents was gay, with only you’re wn bias–and that of the anti-ex-gay industry, to support it.

You can’t have it both ways, though I’m sure you are going to try. Either the optimal opposite paradigm is true, or it really isn’t.

What Ben said. But you also said this: “and these interactions are significant and complementary between fathers and mothers. I believe these differences to be pertinent in helping to develop a well-rounded child.” When I said physical characteristics, I was talking about anatomy. Anatomy does not create those characteristics you vaguely alluded to which you feel are pertinent to raising a child. Hormones, attitudes, values, emotions and other psychological functions create those characteristics, and men and women both display a vast range of them. And these characteristics that complement each other? What are they, and why can’t members of both sexes display them? You guys never say. And obviously this point you keep making shapes your opinion on allowing gay adoption or you wouldn’t be arguing it on a forum about gay adoption studies. You’ve yet to say why these vaguely alluded to special gender specific characteristics are more important than finding as many stable, permanent, loving homes with responsible parents as possible for the over abundance of children waiting in the system. Face it, this position really just falls apart when you think about it. My future kid will have two moms. What specifically will he miss out on? I doubt he’ll miss a father if one was never there. He will have male role models in his uncles, grandfathers, and our best guy friends. I know just as much if not more than my own father about sports, and he’s not an anti-jock. The only sport he has a greater knowledge in is motor sports, which many would argue aren’t sports. I can push my kid to be responsible, honest, caring ,and hardworking. My partner is truly my better half. She’ll push these things on my kid even more. We will also be loving and accepting. We have no choice but to plan our families. We won’t be having kids by mistake. There really is no argument to keep us from adopting, especially when in so many jurisdictions, single people can adopt. Recent laws that barred singles in some states, many claimed were just an indirect way to also ban gay couples.

You know what’s a good home for a child? One in which, if there is two parents, the relationship is working and there is mutual love, trust, and peace between parent 1 and parent 2. That wasn’t the case in my family for the bulk of my childhood. I blame that on my parents’ alcoholism. And they were opposite sexers. I’m happy to say they each have more than ten years of sobriety and now they get along great. I could have used that harmony growing up though. There was a lot of tears and hurt back then. My father’s horrible temper made me feel incredibly small as a child and effected my self esteem for a long time.
You know what else makes good parents? Planning the family. My father let it slip one time that out of 3 kids, I, the middle child, was the only one who was planed. My mother was 19 when she got pregnant with my older brother. My father was still drinking, taking drugs, and more concerned with keeping his motorcycle nice when that little bun ended up in the oven. They weren’t ready. By the time my sister arrived, they were overwhelmed. My mother let my brother get away with a lot. She wasn’t good with the discipline thing. Simply getting angry and spanking a kid is not a good way to prep them for the real world. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but my brother is currently living in a Salvation Army rehab shelter. He has bounced around from rehab to homeless shelter to halfway house and back, after doing two stints in jail and using up all his opportunities to stay with my folks.
I don’t think I need to point out again that same sex couples have heterosexuals beat 100% of the time in the “planning for kids” dept. That’s not to say we don’t wish our love and intimacy could produce a child who shares our loved ones genes with us. But nature doesn’t work out so perfectly. Good thing we are a community-oriented species though. We can simply adopt a discarded child from two heterosexuals who weren’t capable instead of keeping to our own nests and letting the proverbial abandoned birds die. We aren’t the only species that does this, happily. We also have science to help. The fact that we can’t produce children from our acts of love do not make those acts of love any less special to us, nor does it make us less human or less devoted to our partners, or alas, less capable parents.

“The fact that we canâ€™t produce children from our acts of love do not make those acts of love any less special to us, nor does it make us less human or less devoted to our partners, or alas, less capable parents.”

Erin–

Here os course, is the crux of Jeremiah’s argument– the assumption that it DOES indeed make us less than, along with the concomitant assumption of superiority of any heterosexual, no matter how base, over any homosexual, no matter how noble.

Jeremiah responded to me on huffpost, but my reply is not going up. He said the national scientific groups such as the APA are as objective as the anti-gay groups. I call bs on that. They’ve evolved on their position due to their research. They’ve found nothing pathological about same sex attraction, and there is no political or monetary gain in it for them to say so. Groups like NARTH, on the other hand, depend on keeping the 1950’s ideas of sexuality alive in order to convince perfectly normal, well-adjusted people they’re disordered, or they convince people who have other legitimate problems that homosexuality is to blame for all of it. That is of course reckless and dangerous. Any rational person knows who is more objective between the anti-gay religious right, and nationally-accredited professional scientific organizations. As for those groups, besides no longer considering us disordered, they’ve also found that our attraction doesn’t make us less compassionate or functional. They endorse our rights as parents because vague statements about the special characteristics of men and women complementing each other does not constitute a rational argument to demonize gay couples or deem them inferior.

I also asked Jeremiah how, even if he could somehow prove heterosexuals have an edge over same sex couples in parenting just by being straight, that can still be used as an excuse to deny kids a stable home with a same sex couple if the alternative is a group home, temporary foster home, or staying with an abusive parent. I will say it right now. With all other conditions of a person’s parenting capabilities being satisfactory, it is most of the time better to raise a child with the help of a second parent. I am not denouncing single parents. I know some who did a better job than many two-parent homes. But it is just easier financially, emotionally, and physically to have a second person there to help. And a happy, healthy, energized parent generally interacts better with the child and can focus more on positive parenting skills. But we know that’s not possible for all kids, and we give single parents the right to raise their kids, and in many sates, adopted kids, because a single man or woman can still really step it up and be a great parent. We don’t profile single parents as more capable of abuse or neglect. So what is the big fear about same sex couples that they should be disallowed to begin with?
Again science and common sense conclude that being gay does not rub off on people and can’t be taught to someone. It is an innate characteristic. So, if you’re worried about these kids being raised to turn out gay, that is preposterous. The worry in and of itself also reveals the underlying homophobia in all of this. If you’re worried children are more likely to be abused, again that is preposterous. There are nutjobs out there from all groups, male or female, gay or straight, but statistically children are more often abused by heterosexual men. Again, I’m not denouncing heterosexual men for the bad behavior of some.
If you think kids will be confused somehow, I’m just gonna call that for what it is: more bs. A child raised in such an environment will know and understand that environment just as well as I understood mommies and daddies raising children together in my childhood. I also understood single parenting and divorced parenting, and grandparents raising their grandchildren because I met other kids in those situations, and my parents never made it a habit to demonize them and therefore teach me to. The confusion is created by folks who cast out same sex couples as wrong and abnormal, when they’re simply less common, but as normal as everyone else who falls in love and wants to have a family.

Sorry my posts are so long. This parenting and procreation argument is the one the anti-gay side sticks to so much, but when you break it all down, it is more of the same fear and ignorance and demonizing same sex attracted people and same sex couples as inferior, abnormal, immoral, subhuman, etc. And it’s still bunk. And yes, I know I make a lot of typos. Sometimes I change tenses in the middle of a sentence or go from referring to things in the singular forum to the plural forum. I just type it out too fast and try to read as I go aloud in my head. I’m really not as horrible with grammar as my writings on the interwebs make me seem.

So, Jeremiah thinks that the antigay groups are every bit as objective and scientific as the gay groups and scientific groups.

and yet…and yet…

We have NUMEROUS examples of them distorting and falsifying data and research. I myself have caught him doing it twice, one time of which he ‘apologized” for. In this very blog posting, he tried to do it again , and was caught in a deliberate and clumsy lie.

So, what’s the story, J? You deny being a paid propagandist for the Religous Reich. You deny being an unpaid one. Yet clear as clear can be, you arE willing to lie, distort, and obfuscate in support of an obvious agenda.

Are you willing to tell us what your motivation is? Money? Fear. religion? Crazy?

I’m going to go with an otherwise intelligent soul buried within the darkness of you r hear. If I were like you, I probably Couldn’t live with myself.

Erin, I wrote, “I am sorry but I will have to disagree with you on the level of objectivitÂ­y of certain professionÂ­al organizatiÂ­ons.” Then you wrote here, “He said the national scientific groups such as the APA are as objective as the anti-gay groups.” Where did I ever mention anti-gay groups?

I wrote, “…I am not completely against cohabiting couples, heterosexuÂ­al or homosexualÂ­, or single people adopting.” Yet here you imply that I wish to ban single-gender couples from adopting.

Why is it necessary to misrepresent another person’s view, i.e., engage in the ignoble method of strawman arguments? Even Ben in Oakland got into the act.

He wrote here,”These children in the study you (JeremiahA) claim proves that gay people do not make good parents were in fact opposite sex marriages.” However, in my first post on this topic I wrote, “Is this study (Sarantakos) valid? If so, it corroborates Dr. Fitzgibbonsâ€™ point. If not, then it needs to be retracted along with the Sirota study.” Where did I claim that the Sirota study proves that gay people do not make good parents? I wrote the exact opposite. I wrote that the study should be retracted. Why? Because the Sirota study on gay and bisexual husbands did not support Dr. Fitzgibbons’ claim.

So I think concluding our discussion here would be best, especially since we reached an impasse on a rudimentary truism that one’s sex is pertinent to child rearing. If such an intuitively true (“intuition” in the philosophical usage), self-evident statement, unnecessarily backed by studies, could so easily be rejected, then it would be a misuse of our time to continue.

However, I do want to thank you for your generally even-keeled tone and from refraining to engage in the belligerent, hostile rhetoric prevalent here.

(And I do have to admit that Ben in Oakland’s conspiracy theories are fun to read. Here’s one he would probably enjoy…Ben is actually an anti-gay activist hired by co-conspirators (NOM, Christians, Muslims, Jews, NARTH, 7 million Prop. 8 California voters, AFTAH, the Boy Scouts, Domino’s Pizza, Cinemark Theaters, and the Salvation Army) to pretend to be a bellicose pro-gay advocate in order to make gay-friendly advocates look bad.)

C’mon, Jeremiah, this whole debate is about an article where the author misrepresented research to make a point about not letting gay couples adopt. You showed up on both sites to defend the author and bring attention to another study to support him (which is doesn’t really conclusively support either side. What are you doing here arguing with us about it, in defense of Fitzgibbons, if you’re not trying to back up his claim that gays shouldn’t adopt? I said the National scientific groups like the APA are more objective, you disagreed. I don’t remember your exact words, but I do recall reading something to the tune of “we could say that both groups lack objectivity.” Again, I am saying, that is crap. A group that makes money off of repairative therapy will never be anywhere near as objective as the APA. The APA is huge and pushes peer reviews of studies. NARTH is interested in demeaning homosexual relationships, and bending whatever data they find to their agenda. And you are not *completely* against same sex couples adopting? What does that even mean? All in all, I’ve misrepresented nothing. Since this back and forth keeps going on, I admit the last few responses I’ve gotten from you were quickly skimmed, but I’m addressing what you wrote now, so consider me not misrepresenting you, ok? Again, what does it mean that you’re not “completely against it,” and why would you keep arguing about which side has worthwhile studies backing them up and defending this Fitzgibbons guy if there weren’t some level of agreement with his over all conclusion? And I don’t blame Ben for getting snippy. He remembers dealing with you before. I don’t. Maybe he found your earlier arguments irrational. I’ve been arguing with people over this gay thing for what seems like forever, and I can tell you, I’ve picked it all apart, and it’s all crap. Just because you’re trying to use better language in your argument does not mean it can’t also be unraveled to reveal simple anti-gay animus. I stand by my points. I had the same upbringing as my two straight siblings. My functionality as an adult, my life skills, my ability to adapt, my morals, values, and ethics are not negatively affected by the fact that I have fallen in love with someone of my own sex and I have made the healthy choice to accept who I am instead of hide in a closet. It didn’t take away my desire for my dream wedding or being a mom, and I’m going to be a damn good mom. I’m sick of these ridiculous, meaningless arguments that I don’t create a special bond with my partner that is ideal for a child to be brought up around. I’m tired of every other simple-minded argument made in every other question of legal equality for same sex couples. It all boils down to something being inherently damaging and wrong about me and my relationship. That is baseless and offensive. So, again, you can accuse me of misrepresenting you, all you’d like. You’re not going to distract me or anyone else from the argument or successfully point to me as having an immoral argument. I’ve addressed your points, now that you’ve corrected me as to what exactly it was you wrote, but I still don’t see you as over all arguing for a different conclusion than I’ve attributed to you.

While reading through Jeremiah’s comments, I’ve been struck by a wild and crazy thought: Could Jeremiah actually be Dr. Michael Brown? There is just something about the writing style. Maybe it’s the relentless feigning of civility.

I don’t know what his dog is in this fight. I sense he’s back-peddling though. This argument wouldn’t keep going if he wasn’t trying to back up the anti-gay adoption stance. I know it’s getting old. There really aren’t two equally valid sides to this issue, and I’m tired of the attempts to cover up the animus with these moderate-sounding arguments.

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